You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something–your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

In his manifesto, Stop Stealing Dreams, Seth Godin wrote how students today are educated in “collecting dots. Almost none of it spent teaching them the skills necessary to connect dots. The magic of connecting dots is that once you learn the techniques, the dots can change but you’ll still be good at connecting them.”

HELPING A CLIENT CONNECT DOTS

Recently, this came to light when I was speaking with a client who was noticing things needing correction and frustrated that employees were not seeing, and addressing, the same things.

I responded stating it’s not a flaw of his seeing things and wanting to improve them that was the problem. The actual problem was why his employees didn’t see those details.

I concluded that this was the single difference between the innovator and the ordinary person: one saw the dots and connected them while others 1) didn’t see them or 2) if they did, they didn’t explore, question, or connect any of them.

This aspect of constant attentiveness to how things are applies to companies, products, brands, as well as to personal brands and is the foundation for this thing we call innovation……..”

2. In your book Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling, you say you hold your graphics to high standards when it comes to three areas: utility, soundness and beauty. Tell us more about C5’s workflow for creating graphics that succeed in these areas. How many people are typically involved in the creation of each graphic? What tools and apps are most useful when creating graphics?

AN: As one who relishes inspiration in many forms , lo, much that is inspirational comes from the people who are and exercise their creativity….. Fast Company has compiled a representative list of 100. Peruse and enjoy !

Begun in 2011 by Big Think and the Jack Parker Corporation, The Floating University is an online educational initiative that debuted at Harvard, Yale, and Bard College. The purpose of The Floating University, according to its site, is to “democratize access to the world’s best thinkers” by providing free, approximately one hour-long courses on a wide range of topics, taught at a university level by experts and professors in the various fields. The inaugural course, the most favored at the three universities, is Great Big Ideas, and it more or less does what it says: tackles some of the largest, most perplexing questions in digestible introductions that also manage to be rigorous, informative, and thought-provoking.

In the lecture above, for example, Harvard cognitive psychologist and linguist Steven Pinker presents an “eSeminar” in linguistics, addressing dogged questions in the field over whether or not humans have an innate, universal grammar (as Noam Chomsky has famously argued); why language is so fundamental to our social relationships; and how language evolved. Pinker, who describes human language in broad terms as a “miracle” and a “window into the human mind,” also gets into the specific subfields of linguistics, discussing them in terms that any layperson can understand without much diluting the fascinating philosophical and scientific debates around what Darwin called our “instinctive tendency to speak” to one another, from infancy onward, all over the world, in some 6000 different languages.

The Great Big Ideas (now added to our list of 550 Free Online Courses) lecture series consists of twelve lectures total, including Pinker’s.

AN : A fast moving but highly informative video ( see source article ) covering language, language learning and linguistics. Eleven other topics and links there as well.

“What Dostoevsky has to do with the hunchback of Notre Dame, Muhammad Ali, and dandelions.

As a firm believer in combinatorial creativity, I’m always interested in the ecosystem of influences and how we honor those who inspire us. Reader Will Shaw points me to this handwritten note by music icon Nick Cave entitled “More Things to Remember…,” courtesy of Melbourne’s Arts Centre, in which Cave lists some of his influences. Will writes:

“It is clear that Nick Cave was only able to reach his significant artistic heights through appropriating ideas and aesthetics from his heroes and influences and melding them into something uniquely powerful.” ”

AN : interdisciplinary pollination of influences and ideas applies to the Sciences as well as the Arts….

“There is a school of thought that says that creativity is enhanced by having all the resources you need. There is an equal and opposite view that suggests that limitations can be the spur to creativity. It is to this view that I want to turn. Starting with the gypsy jazz musician Django Reinhardt: …..

The parallel business innovation lesson from my background in pharmaceuticals is that many of the world’s breakthrough therapies were not discovered in sterile glass corporate buildings, but often in rather unpromising conditions, by people who had been starved of budget, resources and attention by the corporate centre. I’m not suggesting that this should become a modus operandi for running innovative businesses. Just that sometimes opulence does not produce the conditions where people give that extra effort that leads to innovative breakthroughs.

At a personal level, give someone all s/he needs and he may use those resources to come up with something ingenious. Tell him or her that it’s impossible or there isn’t time and they might spend a lot more effort proving you wrong. Clearly this is not an absolute truth in all circumstances, but it’s widely ignored.”

AN : do watch and listen to the inspiring stories in the accompanying videos in the link….

“Creativity is underrated – at least that is what Fredrik Härén, author of The Idea Book believes.“We want to be thought of as being creative people, but, by and large, companies are not fostering creativity, but practically killing it … through bureaucracy, through process-driven organisations,” Härén told INSEAD MBAs at the school’s Asia campus in Singapore.

The irony, however, is that almost all companies have innovation and creativity in their mission statements or their slogans, he says. But these are all just a marketing exercise, or the mission statement doesn’t trickle down to the rest of the organisation.

But why the emphasis on creativity? According to Härén, harnessing creative energy can generate new ideas, which can, in turn, lead to greater economic and social progress.”